


it's funny how i still forgot

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Acting, Amnesia, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Eventual Fluff, Fix-It, M/M, Resurrection, Stanley Uris Lives, Temporary Amnesia, The Turtle (IT) CAN Help Us, background canon relationships, richie is gay and having a small crisis, sandman cameo in here hi death, some real person cameos, two 40yos trying their hand at this courting thing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-01-06 08:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21223412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: “Hey, Mr. Tozier,” Eddie’s voice (and it is Eddie’s voice) says, “makeup wants you in fifteen.”Richie’s head jerks upward so fast it’s a wonder he doesn’t accidentally break his own neck.or: a deal is made, and Eddie and Stan come back. unfortunately, there's a catch. now the Losers have two seeming lookalikes on their hands, and Richie has to deal with a PA on the set of his new show who looks and acts just like Eddie Kaspbrak, but with tattoos.





	1. won the battle but lost the heart

**Author's Note:**

> title is from Mitski's "Two Slow Dancers".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Banners' "Ghosts".

There are rules, to bargaining with the cosmos. There are laws even gods must obey, dying or not, creator of the universe or not. When one bargains, there is always a drawback.

A turtle swims through an ocean of stars.

It doesn’t say anything, but it makes a bargain. Two lives, stolen away by a creature of purest evil, and a magic that seems almost to burst out of the creature’s death—this is where bargains begin.

A pale woman in a black dress sits atop the turtle—she wasn’t there before, but she is there now, in the space between heartbeats. She heard it call to her, to the souls in her keeping. Through the stars, the sound of wings seems to echo, impossibly loud in the vastness of space. She sits on the turtle’s shell, no bigger than a speck on it, for how vast it is.

“You’re asking a lot, Maturin,” says Death, looking up at the stars.

Silence.

“I know, I know,” says Death. “She’s dead, I bore her away already. She died scared, which is pretty ironic, considering what she got up to in life.” She sighs, and lets herself lie back against the shell, arms open wide. “You’ve grown soft, big guy,” she says, with a small smile.

Silence.

“Those two back, huh?” Death asks. “Well. You’re being polite, at least—people don’t usually tend to ask before resurrecting someone.” She huffs out a quiet laugh. “I don’t mind. They come back around eventually, everyone does. It does get a little annoying when it happens all the time but—I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

Silence. The turtle floats on through the stars, fins pushing slowly through the void.

“I can’t send them back as they are,” says Death, softly. “I can bend the rules a little, since you’re asking, but the rest—they and their friends have an uphill climb. The magic’s a little,” she waves her hand through the air, and sparks float upward from her fingertips, “weird, right now, in Derry. I can use that, and put them somewhere the others will find them, but they’ll be—incomplete, until then. They’ll remember things differently.”

Silence.

“Yeah, I know,” says Death, with a tired sigh. She pushes a white hand through raven-dark hair. “I don’t like it either. Believe me, if I could, I’d breathe the life back into them both without her interference. But that’s not how this works, and we both know it.” She breathes out slow, and looks up at the unending stars. “It’s a job,” she says, “and there’s rules I’ve got to follow.”

Silence.

“I accept the bargain, then,” she says, and turns over. She leans down to press a kiss to the vast shell she sits on. “Be seeing you one day, Maturin,” she says, softly. “Until then, be well.”

Somewhere in space, there is the sound of her wings.

\--

Eight months after Derry and four after a stint in therapy, Richie walks onto the set of an office sitcom. His new agent Lauren had scored him an audition for a recurring role, and Richie had sucked in a breath and given it his best at the audition, and apparently it’s worked, because here he is: Richie Tozier, playing Alan Gilman, the incompetent administrator of King & Goldfarb Law. It’s a pretty good job, it keeps the money coming in while he works on new jokes, and he gets to essentially fuck around and drive the other characters up the wall.

He drops into a chair with his name printed on the back, takes note of the set and the other actors. An androgynous fellow with brown skin and tattoos is sitting in the makeup chair putting up with the makeup artist fussing over the peacock tattoo fanning out over his cheek, and Mindy Kaling, Krysten Ritter and Sarah Goldberg are running through a scene together, scripts in hand. Richie flips through his own script—he’s not appearing in this scene, it’s just Mindy, Krysten and Sarah, but he wants to watch them at work.

They’re shooting at the CBS Studios in LA, having built a set that looks convincingly like a law firm’s office, all modern and slick and sleek and shit like that. There’s even what looks like transparent glass in place, although Richie’s memorized the script, he knows it’s sugar glass—at some point he’s going to fall through the glass, shouting invectives.

“Hey, can someone spare a PA over here?!” someone calls. Richie looks up, more out of curiosity than anything, just in time to see a man already rushing up to help haul some equipment into the set. Huh, guy has nice tattoos, and an even nicer ass.

Richie lets himself ogle the guy for a minute before he looks back down at his script, flips through to his first scene, and says his first line: “Welcome to your first day in hell! Hah, just kidding, we’re not that bad, I swear.” He runs through the scene in his head, before—

“Hey, Mr. Tozier,” Eddie’s voice (and it _is_ Eddie’s voice) says, “makeup wants you in fifteen.”

Richie’s head jerks upward so fast it’s a wonder he doesn’t accidentally break his own neck.

The PA from before is tapping his foot, and is turning away now to get the director’s attention over something. But Richie stares at him, because he knows Eddie’s face anywhere. He recognizes those eyes, that voice, even the way his hand chops through the air when he talks fast.

“Give me like a minute,” he says to Eddie, to the PA who looks so much like Eddie that it’s tearing Richie’s heart open just to look at him, “I gotta call somebody first.”

So he slips out of the set, fumbling for his phone all the while, cursing up and down. This is—This has to be someone’s sick idea of a joke or something, has to be It somehow back from the dead. There’s no way Eddie could be here, in LA, working as a PA. There’s no way Eddie could look at him and see just—some stranger, again, not after everything that’s happened.

He’s just about to call Bev when she calls him. He slides his thumb across the screen and says, “Hey! Hey, Bev, I was just about to call you—”

“I just saw Stan,” says Bev.

“What,” says Richie. Then, “I just saw _Eddie_.”

“Where are you right now?” Bev asks.

“I’m on set at CBS,” says Richie, looking back inside. “But I can duck out for a bit, say it’s an emergency—the director’s a perfectionist and she wants to film the main girls’ scenes first, it’s gonna take a couple of hours before I need to be on set. Where are you?”

“I’m in town to meet with a client, I can meet you at Manhattan Bagel in twenty minutes,” says Bev. He hears some muffled voices and the sound of a soft laugh, before she comes back and says, “Ben says hi, by the way.”

“Tell the haystack I said hi to his abs,” says Richie.

“Richie says hi to your abs specifically,” says Bev. There’s a pause and a distant response, before she says, cheerfully, “He says thanks. Get me a chai tea latte and a lunch wrap, you’d get there faster than I will.”

“Got it, got it,” says Richie. He looks towards the entrance, just in time to watch the PA come out—and he really _does_ look like Eddie, is the thing. Tattoos aside, because Richie’s never thought Eddie would want tattoos, that’s the same face, same eyes, same nervous energy thrumming under his skin. Fuck, he’s even got a scar on his cheek.

Eddie, because it’s Eddie and who else could it be, looks over at him, frowns, and says, “What the hell are you doing out here, Tozier? Makeup wants you now, they’re done with Molly. Are you—Are you smoking? Do you _know_ the risks of smoking near the set? Not to mention the risk of lung cancer—”

“Yeah, uh,” says Richie, thinking fast, “about that—I need to talk to the director for a moment, some family shit came up and I gotta take off for a few hours.”

“What, seriously?” says Eddie. “Never pegged you for the type to ditch.”

“I’m not _ditching_, something’s just come up,” says Richie. “I’ll be back in like, two hours, tops.”

“You’d better,” says Eddie. “Come on, let’s go find Cooper so you can tell her yourself.”

\--

Richie’s first to the café, as Bev predicted, and orders a ham and cheese bagel along with a latte for himself, and Bev’s wrap and chai tea latte too. Then he nervously nibbles at the bagel, running through whatever the _fuck_ just happened.

That—wasn’t It. He knows that much. If that had been It he would not be here nibbling on a ham and cheese bagel, he would be in the middle of getting psychologically and emotionally tortured. Since he’s not, there’s a ninety—okay, an eighty-five percent chance that’s not It. Or whatever’s left of It, if there is anything left after that last battle under Neibolt.

Still.

Dead people generally tend to _stay dead_. There’s no big miracles that bring back the dead, no magic trick where you could just snap your fingers and the dead can breathe again. But if that’s still the case then who the fuck is the PA on set who looks so much like Eddie that it’s ripping Richie’s heart apart even just to look at him? And that’s not even mentioning Bev saying she ran into _Stan_ of all people. They _went to his grave_. Richie had put a rock on his grave and then gone off to cry his eyes out, fresh off his first few therapy sessions and slowly trying to put his life back together.

“What the fuck is going on here?” he asks the turtle in his latte art.

It does not wink back.

With a muttered curse, he stabs it with the stirring spoon, and stirs.

Honestly, he kind of wishes this whole mess _were_ It. Which would suck, but at least he’d know what to do.

Eddie had taken his hand. Eddie had dragged him to Cooper and stood off to the side, and every time Richie got a chance he kept looking over to him just to check if he was still _there_. How he’d managed to stumble through a full conversation with Eddie standing not ten feet away, waiting for someone to call on a PA, Richie would never know. God, he’d even ranted the same way.

And the kicker of it? Eddie hadn’t even recognized him.

Nothing! Nada! Zero recognition!

Fucking _clown_. If Richie didn’t know better, he’d swear this was Pennywise at work again, and boy oh boy would that little smiling white-faced bastard clown get wrecked just for this. He almost wishes it were. Then he wouldn’t have to pretend to be completely fine in Eddie’s general vicinity, while falling apart on the inside.

Fuck.

When the tears come, they come fast. Richie hunches in on himself and wipes at his eyes, shoulders shaking, feeling as—as hollowed out and broken the day he had to be dragged out of Neibolt, kicking and screaming the whole way. _Let me go, let me go, we can still help him please we have to go back Eddie’s still down there please—_

He pushes his latte away, takes his glasses off, and breaks, sobbing into his hands. People are probably staring but it’s fine, he’s already hit rock fucking bottom, they’ll probably sell pictures and people will just say, _What, the dude who had a mental breakdown in public last year and then came out? So fucking what if he’s crying in a café?_ Christ.

“Rich?” Bev’s voice, Bev’s blessed goddamn voice, asks.

“_Bev_,” he croaks, and without a word her arms wrap around him. It’s an awkward angle for a hug, but Richie doesn’t care, he buries as much of his face into her shirt as he can and cries there.

Beverly doesn’t say anything. She just holds him tight, and if he feels some tears hit his shirt—well, he won’t say anything either. She loved Eddie too, she loved Stan, they all loved each other so much. This sucks for everyone.

“God, fuck that clown,” he says into her shirt.

“I know,” she says, her voice shaky. “I know, Richie.”

\--

“How’d you see him?” Bev asks, after they’ve both cried their hearts out and utterly ruined each other’s shirts. She’s sitting across from him now, munching on a lunch wrap.

“He’s a PA on set,” says Richie. “I didn’t even know it was him at first, he had fucking _tattoos_ and shit, but then he walked up to me to tell me makeup wanted me and when I got a good look at him—” He flails a hand out. “Blast from the fucking past right there. You?”

Bev takes a sip of her latte, and says, “I got hired by someone in town to design her dress for her wedding day. I came in to take her measurements, and she was talking with the wedding photographer. Who was _Stan_, god—I had to back out of there and get Ben, I didn’t know if I was hallucinating or something, if it was It or just grief.”

“Ben saw him too,” Richie says, more of a statement than a question.

“Yeah,” says Bev. “We were both pretty shocked. He actually—he checked the storm drains and the manhole cover, we were so rattled.”

Richie imagines it: Bev and Ben looking into storm drains, trying to pull up a manhole cover, thinking a clown might be hiding somewhere down there. Trying not to panic, Bev with her cigarette in hand and Ben pacing on the sidewalk.

“I didn’t check,” he admits. “I knew.”

Bev doesn’t say anything, but she nods.

“So,” Richie says, “what the fuck do we think is going on here?”

“I don’t know,” says Bev. “We can call Bill and Mike, maybe Mike has some idea. Maybe the ritual did something after all, or maybe—when It died, something shifted.”

Maybe, maybe, maybe. Richie massages his temples. “Didn’t shift enough,” he says, “did Stan even recognize you? Or Ben?”

“No,” says Bev. “I said his name and he was just—as confused as I was. Probably even moreso.” She smiles, ironic. “The bride called him Alex, and when she asked all I said was that he reminded me of someone.” _Reminded me of someone_, yeah, by looking and acting and talking _exactly_ like them. Richie thinks of Eddie standing outside the set, ranting about lung cancer. If they’d let him, he would’ve stayed with him in Neibolt. If they’d let him, maybe he wouldn’t be _Richie_ anymore, the same way Stan didn’t seem to answer to Stan, the same way Eddie doesn’t seem completely the same—the _tattoos_, god, Eddie would never have had tattoos before.

Richie looks down at his latte. He’s—working on liking himself more, lately, thank you Miss Kathleen Vaughn for your services, but he won’t deny it’s a tempting thought. If he’d stayed down in Neibolt with Eddie maybe he’d be someone else with him right now, someone happier.

Or of course considering their luck, maybe he’d be a miserable piece of shit without memories.

“He rants the same way,” he says. “Fucking yelled at me about lung cancer because he thought I was smoking outside the set.”

“He’s as meticulous as ever,” says Bev. “He discussed every single detail I could think of with the bride, and then some. Wedding planners aren’t as thorough as Stan.” Her eyes are moist with tears, and Richie reaches out to take her hand and squeeze, thrice. _I’m here for you._

“So what do we do?” Richie asks.

\--

They call Mike.

They actually _FaceTime_ Mike, and when he picks up, he’s standing near a two-room white shack in Mississippi that’s apparently the birthplace of Elvis Presley. “I’m honestly not sure what I expected,” he says, looking somewhat crestfallen, “it’s just a shack people take pictures at.”

“Great American road trip not treating you right?” Richie asks. “Come out to LA, we’ll make up for it.”

“Give me three months to get there,” Mike says, a corner of his mouth pulling upward in a smile. “What’s up?”

Bev chews her lower lip, fingers twitching like she wants a cigarette. But they’re still inside the café, and smoking’s banned inside, so she settles for stirring her spoon around in her chai latte. “Ben and I saw Stan,” she says. “He was working as a wedding photographer and he didn’t recognize us. The bride whose dress I’m working on called him Alex.”

“I saw Eddie,” Richie says. “He’s a PA on the set of my show and, yeah, I know, grief makes you think weird but, Mike, if it was a grief-induced hallucination or some shit, _I would not add tattoos._”

Mike stares at them for a full ten seconds, then scrubs a hand over his face. “I can head to Columbus and catch a flight to LA tonight,” he says. “Have you called Bill yet?”

“I’ll do it,” says Bev, already pulling her phone out and dialing Bill’s number. “Mike, I’m sorry. If we weren’t sure about this, we wouldn’t have called you.”

“For what it’s worth it’s _probably_ not Pennywise,” Richie says, which is not much of a comfort, but it’s the best one he’s got. The dead are walking with little to no explanation how, and the worst part is that they don’t even remember him. Eddie’s a spitfire as always, could never not be, but he doesn’t look at Richie in the same way. “Ben and Bev checked. Also, I figure, if it was Pennywise, there’d be way more bloodshed and screaming and fucked-up shit.” Not that this isn’t already fucked up in itself: being forgotten, seeing a ghost that breathes and rants and looks at him like Richie’s a stranger.

“It’s not Pennywise,” says Mike, with tones of conviction. “It’s dead.”

“So what the fuck is it, then?” Richie asks.

“No idea,” says Mike. “But we’ll find out.”

Bill, over Bev’s phone, says, “Hey, guys. Something up?”

\--

On her way back to the hotel, Bev sees a pale woman in a black dress across the street, a black umbrella held over her head. She’s so pale she’s almost white—not simply Caucasian, but white like paper, like stars set against the night sky. Bev stops and turns to see the woman smile at her and incline her head, just as a car rolls past them, and quick as a flash, the woman is gone, with the sound of wings echoing in Bev’s mind.

On his way back to the set, Richie looks up at the sky and sees what he swears is a cloud shaped like a turtle. It swims past him, then is covered up by another cloud, and for a few minutes the anxious thrumming under his skin settles into something manageable.


	2. in my head the visions never stop

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Lorde's "Supercut".

Here’s the question: how is one supposed to act like everything is normal, when one’s dead best friend and first love is walking around not fifteen feet away from them, breathing and alive (and _tattooed_), but apparently amnesiac? How is one supposed to look him in the eye and see nothing but un-recognition and not feel broken up inside? How is one supposed to be so, so close to him and not be shattered by the distance between them?

Richie doesn’t know. Can’t answer.

All he knows is that every time Eddie even looks at him it’s about all he can do to keep from breaking into tears right there on the set. Krysten pats him awkwardly on the back once and says, “Hey, man, if you want—I, uh, I can show you how to knit. It helps with stuff.”

Richie does not take her up on the knitting, on account of how his hands are too big and also too shaky half the time to hold knitting needles. Just because she’s so fucking earnest, though, nothing at all like the characters she’s played, he lets her down gently, and she bounces off to pull someone else into her knitting thing. He wishes her the best of luck, he truly does.

He gets through his scenes with admirable aplomb. The guy he’s playing is wildly incompetent, as a civilian administrator, and weirdly smug about it too. _At least I’m honest I’m a rat,_ one of his lines reads. Onscreen, though, when Richie watches himself while the director talks to him, Gilman comes off as—broken, somehow. Like he knows this is the best he’ll ever get, and is bitter about it, and god help the motherfuckers in his vicinity. It’s not entirely the performance that Richie meant to give, but Melody Cooper, the director for a good chunk of the episodes, seems enthusiastic about it.

“I think it opens up a whole new realm of opportunities for the character’s relationship dynamics,” she says.

Richie’s eyes slide over to Eddie, who’s barking out orders at a group of production interns and gesturing wildly to the shards of sugar glass. “I guess so,” he says. “Hey, uh, quick question—did we hire any new PAs, lately?”

“Oh, you mean Jack over there?” Cooper asks, nodding towards Eddie. Richie’s heart gives a horrible lurch in his chest. “Yeah, he’s new. Honestly I’m kind of surprised you mentioned him, I’ve never had an actor look twice at production assistants before.”

Richie swallows, and says, “Yeah, he just—looks like someone I knew.”

“Yowza, that sucks,” says Cooper, and she winces, the look on his face must be that sad. “Sorry, man. Look, if you want, I can tell Jack not to go near you.”

God, no. Eddie or Jack, Richie can’t deal with him being kept away, and he says, “What? No, it’s fine!” He flaps a hand at Cooper, and says, “I can deal, Coops, promise. I’ll get over it.” He is not over it and he doesn’t think he’ll ever be, but he’s selfish, he wants as much time as he can steal with Eddie. He doesn’t know what this is, after all, just knows that it’s real, it’s happening, and it hurts. “Listen, about Gilman—I think he lost someone.”

Cooper’s eyebrows go up. “That’s dark,” she says.

“We don’t ever have to go into it on the show, we don’t even have to say they’re dead,” says Richie, “but—you said he’s broken, right? Well. Maybe it’s ‘cause the love of his life is gone, somehow. And he’s a bitter-ass motherfucker, because Mindy Kaling and John Cho are right in front of him dancing around each other and expressing their love via insults, and fuck if that doesn’t remind him of the love of his life.”

“The love of his life,” says Cooper, slowly, “called him a shitbag lawyer?”

“A shitbag law student,” says Richie. “Among other things. It’s their fucking love language. And now here’s these two shitheads running circles around each other like they used to and he’s fucking—_tired_, and pissed. So he’s a real bitter fuck, especially towards them, because every time they talk to him he’s reminded of what he lost.”

“Dude,” says Cooper. “For a comedian, you go to some dark places.”

Richie thinks of Eddie’s body under Neibolt. Thinks of the warm spray of blood on his face and on his glasses. Thinks of those two letters on the kissing bridge, _R+E_ carved into the wood for as long as Richie will live, if not longer. “I’ve been to some dark places,” he says, with a shrug.

“No shit,” says Cooper. “I always just thought he was a dumb motherfucker, but you have a _lot_ of nuance.” She tilts her head and smiles. “If you want,” she says, “tomorrow we can talk with Roth, maybe she’ll be amenable to that interpretation. I can tell you already, though: I love it.”

Richie comes away from the meeting feeling—hollowed out, sort of. Like he’s scooped his own heart out of his chest and placed it into this character, who was just supposed to be a caricature of incompetence, and turned him into a funhouse mirror version of himself. He wonders if Gilman ever told this guy he loved him. He hopes to god Alan Gilman had more courage than Richie ever did, that he at least got years with the love of his life before he was ripped away from him.

It’s while he’s thinking that he almost crashes right into Eddie.

“Jesus Christ, Tozier, watch where you’re fucking _going!_” Eddie snaps, and Richie does not break down into blubbering tears all over him out of shock. “Have you got any other scenes today or—”

“Yeah,” Richie manages, “yeah, a couple, but uh—they’re doing a few of the Josie and Sam scenes first. I was going to duck out for a drive.” His eyes stray to Eddie’s new tattoos, and he says, “See, your mom’s waiting up on me in the car, and I’m planning to show her a real good time.”

Eddie’s face flushes red, and he shoves at Richie’s chest. “Shut the fuck _up_,” he huffs, “god, you asshole. I watched your new special on Comedy Central, I _know_ my mom’s not in your fucking car.”

Eddie watches his shows? Oh. He watched the one where Richie came out, of course the classic wouldn’t work on him anymore. “Yeah, you’re right,” says Richie, “it’s your dad.”

“_Fuck_ you,” says Eddie, with feeling.

Richie can’t help but smile. “You, uh,” he says, “Jack, you new to LA?”

“Yep,” says Eddie. “What gave it away?”

_Eight months ago I watched you die in front of me, that’s what._ “The tattoos,” says Richie. “I had a roommate whose first order of business when he hit LA was to get some ‘fuck you’ tattoos.”

“Oh, these,” says Eddie. “Yeah, I worked myself up for the first one, and then it just—got easier, I guess.”

Would this Jack be what Eddie would’ve grown up to be, if the clown hadn’t completely fucked with his memory? If things had turned out better? Would Eddie have gotten tattoos, at some point? Eddie had always had sparks of rebellion every now and then that Richie sat back and watched, fanning them occasionally when he thought it would be funny. He could’ve gotten tattoos, at some point.

“Where’d you get them?” Richie asks.

“This tattoo parlor called West Point,” says Eddie, and Richie slams his fist against his open palm.

“That’s the one with the Filipino food truck hanging out nearby,” says Richie. “I love that food truck. They’ve got bags of pork rinds, it’s amazing.”

“Yeah, but the _cholesterol_,” says Eddie. “You’re forty, man, you’re at more risk of a heart attack and cholesterol build-up now that you’re older.”

“You’ve just never tasted it,” says Richie. “Come on, I’ll kick your dad out, we can go for a drive and get some crispy pork rinds.”

“I can’t exactly up and _leave_,” says Eddie, but his mouth is curling upwards in a small smile. “I actually do have responsibilities as a PA, I’m not just here to yell at you when you’re playing Candy Crush. Also, don’t you have a diet or something?”

“I can get a jumbo bag and we’ll split it,” says Richie. “I don’t have to watch my diet, I’m not the lead, and you’re not going in front of the camera any time soon, a few rinds won’t kill you.”

Eddie squints at him for a moment. Something unreadable passes over his face, wrenching at Richie’s heart—there once was a time when he knew every tic of Eddie’s face, every expression. But then twenty-seven years passed them by and they grew up, and then Eddie died and now here they are, with the weight of their history solely on Richie’s shoulders. Certainly Eddie doesn’t seem to remember, and isn’t that just a kick in the teeth. It’s like the universe is saying, _Here’s your best friend back! He thinks you’re a complete stranger!_

And then someone calls, “Hey, Jack, get over here!”

“Duty calls,” says Eddie, with a shrug, turning away. “But, uh—I’ll keep it in mind, I guess.”

“See you ‘round, Jacky-boy,” says Richie.

“Don’t fucking call me that,” says Eddie. “_Dickie._”

Richie laughs, and for the first time in a very long time, it doesn’t feel like he’s scraped it out from the hollow of his throat.

\--

He hits the food truck, buys a jumbo-sized bag of pork rinds, then sits in his car and calls Bill.

The first time he did this, he was greeted with Bill politely saying, “William Denbrough speaking, can I help you?” Of course, now that Bill has his number and knows who’s calling, the first thing he hears is, “Hi, Trashmouth, aren’t you supposed to be _writing_ some shitty jokes right now?”

“Hi, Big Bill,” says Richie, fondly, “you make any progress on that ending?”

“Fuck you,” says Bill, just as fond. “What’s up? Besides. Well. You know.”

“Eddie and Stan,” says Richie. “I talked to Eddie, he’s going by Jack, and he’s new to LA. But other than that, he’s pretty much the _same_.” His voice cracks, on that last word, the thin mask of humor he’s been trying to hold on to beginning to tear at the seams. “Fuck, Bill. What the hell am I supposed to do?”

“I’d say avoid him,” says Bill, kindly, “but—if it were me, I wouldn’t be able to take my own advice either.” There’s a sigh, and a muffled, distant voice asking something. “I’m fine, Audra,” says Bill, “it’s just Richie.”

“Put me on speaker and let me talk to your wife,” Richie demands. “She’s cooler than you are.”

“She’s too cool for you,” Bill informs him, but there’s that distant voice again, the sound of footsteps, a small round of fond arguing. Richie’s heart wrenches at the sound of it, before Audra’s voice comes through loud and clear, saying, “—for dinner?”

“Yeah, no, got a couple more scenes to shoot today,” says Richie. Of all the Losers, he’s usually the closest to Bill and Audra in town, and they’ve started hanging out more often. The first few times he’d been nervous around _the Audra Phillips_, but eventually he trounced her at a fighting game and she cussed him out so thoroughly he’d jokingly proposed. “Sorry. We can do Tuesday next week, though?”

“Yeah, we can,” says Audra. “Just don’t expect Bill to contribute much.”

“I’m writing a short story for a horror collection,” says Bill. “So, yeah, I’ll probably be googling some suspicious shit next week and writing in the middle of dinner.”

“No laptops at the dinner table, sweetheart,” says Audra, fondly.

Richie smiles sadly down at his jumbo bag. Then he sucks in a breath and says, “Hey, Big Bill, is this story gonna end in the protagonist having dreamed the whole mess?”

“Fuck you,” Bill says, pleasantly, while Audra laughs uproariously, and for a few minutes Richie slides gratefully into the old back-and-forth, trying to get enough of a rise out of Bill that he stutters again. For now this is enough. For now it pulls his attention away from Eddie, and Stan.

For now.

\--

There’s a reason why people start laughing whenever Yakety Sax plays, even if it’s playing over something objectively horrific—Richie stumbled on a video that replaced Rains of Castamere with Yakety Sax at the Red Wedding and broke down into peals of laughter, once, for example. It’s the sheer incongruency: all that blood and gore and tragedy, and some shitweed forgot their sheet music and had to play fucking _Yakety Sax_. See? Funny, the way Pennywise could never be. Fucking clown.

They say that comedy is just tragedy plus time. Incongruency at work, right there, because how do you make something that broke you open funny? How do you turn the sight of your best friend’s corpse into something that’ll make people laugh? How do you turn twenty-seven years of fear and repression into a joke?

Richie learned something once in a class he took, back in the nineties: in a comedy, the characters take it dead seriously. So the performer must, too.

Mindy Kaling and John Cho are trading insults in front of him, ramping up the chemistry between them with heated looks and barbs that aren’t as sharp as they pretend to be. Richie thinks of Eddie’s corpse in his arms, of the claw spearing Eddie through the chest, of the yawning chasm in his heart. Bitter grief wells back up in his throat, and his line comes out with an edge as he wedges himself between them with a stack of paper in his arms: “Are you guys done flirting? I have to put this shit somewhere.”

“Hey, hang on,” says Mindy, stopping him in his tracks, “shouldn’t you give those memos to HR? You know, so they can actually distribute it?”

“Then where am I gonna write my novel?” Richie shoots back.

John says, “In Google Ducks, asshole.” His eyes go wide as what he’s just said registers.

Richie, who has never claimed to be any good at staying in character, bursts into a fit of laughter. Out of the corner of his eye, Cooper sighs and calls, “Cut! Cut.”

“Sorry!” John calls, as Mindy moves in to help Richie actually _stand_. “Sorry, Rich.”

The grief melts away fast, as Mindy helps him off the set and pats his back as his laughter tapers off. “F-_Fuck_,” he says, gasping for air, “Google _Ducks_.”

“How did you manage to last even two years on SNL, huh?” Mindy asks him, which is a very good question.

“Magic,” Richie tells her, and she rolls her eyes heavenward. From a certain point of view, he’s not lying, and he’s not joking either. Damn Derry magic looked out for him even then, apparently.

Cooper calls, “Let’s start it over from the top!”

She does it three more times, before she’s satisfied, then twice more just in case. Each time, Richie thinks of Eddie’s corpse in his arms, Eddie’s blood seeping through his fingers, and his lines come out bitter, sharp as a gleaming knife. Each time, it feels like flaying his own chest open so people can laugh at his beating, broken heart. He keeps doing it, because—fuck, it’s a job, and you do what you have to.

Eventually Cooper calls it for the scene, and Richie gratefully stumbles off the set towards the table catering’s set up. Even knowing that Eddie’s alive and just a few feet away, probably barking at some poor interns, reliving the memory of his death still hurts. Hurts even more knowing Eddie’s just a few feet away, but doesn’t know who he is, so it’s not Richie got him back, not really. Not all the way. Richie should really find a better way of tapping into his grief and sorrow, but—fuck, if it gets results.

No one comes to talk to him, while he’s wolfing down a snack. Especially not Eddie, which is good, because after that scene Richie’s not too sure if he can hold it together in front of him long enough to have a conversation. He’d have a fucking meltdown, and then he’d have to explain to Eddie what’s going on, and then he would most likely have one very confused PA thinking he’s—projecting, or something, and never talking to him again.

And as much as talking to Eddie like this, like they’re strangers who work on the same set, hurts, it would hurt even worse if he never got to talk to him again.

“Hey, good job back there,” says Krysten, coming up. A couple of knitting needles poke out of her pocket, with a bit of yarn trailing out.

“Thanks,” says Richie. Then he pauses. “Where do you get all that shit for knitting, anyway?”

“Arts and crafts place called the Little Knittery on Radford,” says Krysten, unable to hide a grin. “I got Charlie to start going there every time he’s here.”

“Charlie Cox?” Richie asks.

“Yeah, we hang out,” says Krysten. “New York superheroes gotta stick together, and all.” She jerks a thumb over to the makeup chair, and says, “Anyway, I need to go, they want to touch up my makeup before my next scene.”

“Break a leg, Ritter,” says Richie, as she goes. Then he grabs a paper cup and fills it to the brim with iced tea, before downing the whole thing like he’s throwing back a shot.

“Hey,” says Eddie, walking up, a clipboard in hand. “You okay? It’s just—you seemed pretty intense. Funny, but kinda dark.” He pauses, then adds, “I mean, I don’t know how your process works, so maybe that’s a part of it?”

“No, hey, it’s fine, I’m fine,” says Richie. “I’m—completely fine, I just. Thought of a friend of mine. Lost him a while back, needed to dip into those feelings again, it’s—it’s okay, I’m okay. I’m handling it.” He is handling it so fucking well, if he’s not melting down weeping in Eddie’s arms. “I’m fine,” he adds.

“You basically said you were fine and it was fine like six times,” says Eddie. “I’ve got a roommate who does that whenever his OCD acts up. Obviously you’re not fine.” He frowns at him, and it’s all Richie can do not to turn into a blubbering mess. “Listen, if I’m interrupting your process or something, feel free to tell me to fuck off. But—I don’t know, man, you make me worry.” He waves a hand. “Do you wanna step outside and talk about it? The set won’t fall apart if either of us are just outside for a couple of minutes.”

_No_, he wants to say, but Eddie’s looking up at him with those huge brown eyes, and all Richie can say is, “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

“My car’s outside, if you want privacy,” says Eddie. “And the AC is way better than it is in here.”

“I’ll take it,” says Richie. He lives in Hollywood. Privacy is a luxury he’ll snatch whenever it’s dangled in front of him, and he’s always been greedy for moments alone with Eddie, god help him.

He follows after Eddie, out of the set and into the parking lot.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [You owe me one (The It's Funny How I Still Forgot Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26619940) by [Mortifer_jpg (Mere_Mortifer)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mere_Mortifer/pseuds/Mortifer_jpg)


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